[mb-users] Add as separate albums or a box set?

[Alex Mauer]

On 08/02/2011 02:12 PM, Andii Hughes wrote:
> That's a different issue; lots of recordings need merging.  Unless
> there are differing
> ISRCs or a significant time difference (>10 seconds), recordings with
> the same title should be merged.  

I would say this is not entirely correct: Recordings should be merged if
and only if they are in fact the same recording, without regard to ISRCs
and duration

ISRCs and durations are not reliable indicators of this.

If there are different ISRCs it is an indication that further
investigation is required, but not an absolute certainty that it’s
really a different recording.

Track durations are a similar problem: Recordings can obviously be
different but have similar duration. And recordings can be the same but
have different durations as well. Sometimes one recording will have some
extra silence added at the beginning or end. Sometimes a spoken intro or
outro will be edited or cut off.  I even have one bootleg where the
entire audio has been sped up slightly in order to fit on a 75-min.
CD-R.  YMMV as to whether such things should be the same or different
recordings, but in any case it requires more consideration than “it’s a
different length, it must be a different recording”